Compassionate Communalism

Compassionate Communalism PDF Author: Melani Cammett
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801470315
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
In Lebanon, religious parties such as Hezbollah play a critical role in providing health care, food, poverty relief, and other social welfare services alongside or in the absence of government efforts. Some parties distribute goods and services broadly, even to members of other parties or other faiths, while others allocate services more narrowly to their own base. In Compassionate Communalism, Melani Cammett analyzes the political logics of sectarianism through the lens of social welfare. On the basis of years of research into the varying welfare distribution strategies of Christian, Shia Muslim, and Sunni Muslim political parties in Lebanon, Cammett shows how and why sectarian groups deploy welfare benefits for such varied goals as attracting marginal voters, solidifying intraconfessional support, mobilizing mass support, and supporting militia fighters.Cammett then extends her arguments with novel evidence from the Sadrist movement in post-Saddam Iraq and the Bharatiya Janata Party in contemporary India, other places where religious and ethnic organizations provide welfare as part of their efforts to build political support. Nonstate welfare performs a critical function in the absence of capable state institutions, Cammett finds, but it comes at a price: creating or deepening social divisions, sustaining rival visions of the polity, or introducing new levels of social inequality.Compassionate Communalism is informed by Cammett's use of many methods of data collection and analysis, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis of the location of hospitals and of religious communities; a large national survey of Lebanese citizens regarding access to social welfare; standardized open-ended interviews with representatives from political parties, religious charities, NGOs, and government ministries, as well as local academics and journalists; large-scale proxy interviewing of welfare beneficiaries conducted by trained Lebanese graduate students matched with coreligionist respondents; archival research; and field visits to schools, hospitals, clinics, and other social assistance programs as well as political party offices throughout the country.

Compassionate Communalism

Compassionate Communalism PDF Author: Melani Cammett
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801470315
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book

Book Description
In Lebanon, religious parties such as Hezbollah play a critical role in providing health care, food, poverty relief, and other social welfare services alongside or in the absence of government efforts. Some parties distribute goods and services broadly, even to members of other parties or other faiths, while others allocate services more narrowly to their own base. In Compassionate Communalism, Melani Cammett analyzes the political logics of sectarianism through the lens of social welfare. On the basis of years of research into the varying welfare distribution strategies of Christian, Shia Muslim, and Sunni Muslim political parties in Lebanon, Cammett shows how and why sectarian groups deploy welfare benefits for such varied goals as attracting marginal voters, solidifying intraconfessional support, mobilizing mass support, and supporting militia fighters.Cammett then extends her arguments with novel evidence from the Sadrist movement in post-Saddam Iraq and the Bharatiya Janata Party in contemporary India, other places where religious and ethnic organizations provide welfare as part of their efforts to build political support. Nonstate welfare performs a critical function in the absence of capable state institutions, Cammett finds, but it comes at a price: creating or deepening social divisions, sustaining rival visions of the polity, or introducing new levels of social inequality.Compassionate Communalism is informed by Cammett's use of many methods of data collection and analysis, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis of the location of hospitals and of religious communities; a large national survey of Lebanese citizens regarding access to social welfare; standardized open-ended interviews with representatives from political parties, religious charities, NGOs, and government ministries, as well as local academics and journalists; large-scale proxy interviewing of welfare beneficiaries conducted by trained Lebanese graduate students matched with coreligionist respondents; archival research; and field visits to schools, hospitals, clinics, and other social assistance programs as well as political party offices throughout the country.

The Politics of Non-state Social Welfare

The Politics of Non-state Social Welfare PDF Author: Melani Cammett
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801470323
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Across the world, welfare states are under challenge—or were never developed extensively in the first place—while non-state actors increasingly provide public goods and basic welfare. In many parts of the Middle East and South Asia, sectarian organizations and political parties supply basic services to ordinary people more extensively and effectively than governments. In sub-Saharan Africa, families struggle to pay hospital fees, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) launch welfare programs as states cut subsidies and social programs. Likewise, in parts of Latin America, international and domestic NGOs and, increasingly, private firms are key suppliers of social welfare in both urban and rural communities. Even in the United States, where the welfare state is far more developed, secular NGOs and faith-based organizations are critical components of social safety nets. Despite official entitlements to public welfare, citizens in Russia face increasing out-of-pocket expenses as they are effectively compelled to seek social services through the private market In The Politics of Non-State Social Welfare, a multidisciplinary group of contributors use survey data analysis, spatial analysis, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic and archival research to explore the fundamental transformation of the relationship between states and citizens. The book highlights the political consequences of the non-state provision of social welfare, including the ramifications for equitable and sustainable access to social services, accountability for citizens, and state capacity. The authors do not assume that non-state providers will surpass the performance of weak, inefficient, or sometimes corrupt states but instead offer a systematic analysis of a wide spectrum of non-state actors in a variety of contexts around the world, including sectarian political parties, faith-based organizations, community-based organizations, family networks, informal brokers, and private firms.

Citizen Hariri

Citizen Hariri PDF Author: Hannes Baumann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190687169
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
[Lebanon's] "Rafiq Hariri was a 'self-made' billionaire who became prime minister and shaped postwar reconstruction. His assassination in February 2005 almost tipped the country into civil strife. Yet Hariri was neither a militia leader nor from a traditional political family. How did this outsider rise to wield such immense political and economic power? Citizen Hariri shows how he converted his wealth and close ties to the Saudi monarchy into political power. Hariri is used as a prism to examine how changes in global neoliberalism reshaped Lebanese politics. ... But at the same time, Hariri was a deeply Lebanese figure. He had to fend against militia leaders and a hostile Syrian regime. The billionaire outsider eventually came to behave like a traditional Lebanese political patron. Hannes Baumann assesses not only the personal legacy of the man dubbed 'Mr Lebanon' but charts the wider social and economic transformations his rise represented." Provided by the publisher.

Beyond the Lines

Beyond the Lines PDF Author: Sarah E. Parkinson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501766317
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Beyond the Lines explores the social underpinnings of rebel adaptation and resilience. How do rebel groups cope with crises such as repression, displacement, and fragmentation? What explains changes in militant organizations' structures and behaviors over time? Drawing on nearly two years of ethnographic research, Sarah E. Parkinson traces shifts in Palestinian militant groups' internal structures and practices during the civil war of 1975 to 1990 and foreign occupations of Lebanon. She shows that most militants approach asymmetrical warfare as a series of challenges centered around information and logistics, characterized by problems such as supplying constantly mobile forces, identifying collaborators, disrupting rival belligerents' operations, and providing essential services like healthcare. Effective negotiation of these challenges contributes to militant organizations' resilience and survival. In this context, the foundation of rebel resilience lies with militants' ability to repurpose their everyday social networks to organizational ends. In the Lebanese setting, Beyond the Lines demonstrates how regionalized differences in Israeli, Syrian, and Lebanese deployment of violence triggered distinct social network responses that led to divergent organizational outcomes for Palestinian militants.

The Mandaean Book of John

The Mandaean Book of John PDF Author: Charles G. Häberl
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110487861
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic homelands by war and oppression. Today, they are a community in crisis, but they provide us with unparalleled access to a library of ancient Gnostic scriptures, as part of the living tradition that has sustained them across the centuries. Gnostic texts such as these have caught popular interest in recent times, as traditional assumptions about the original forms and cultural contexts of related religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been called into question. However, we can learn only so much from texts in isolation from their own contexts. Mandaean literature uniquely allows us not only to increase our knowledge about Gnosticism, and by extension all these other religions, but also to observe the relationship between Gnostic texts, rituals, beliefs, and living practices, both historically and in the present day.

Finding Faith

Finding Faith PDF Author: Richard Flory
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813544262
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Despite the masses still lining up to enter mega-churches with warehouse-like architecture, casually dressed clergy, and pop Christian music, the “Post-Boomer” generation—those ranging in age from twenty to forty—is having second thoughts. In this perceptive look at the evolving face of Christianity in contemporary culture, sociologists Richard Flory and Donald E. Miller argue that we are on the verge of another potential revolution in how Christians worship and associate with one another. Just as the formative experiences of Baby Boomers were colored by such things as the war in Vietnam, the 1960s, and a dramatic increase in their opportunities for individual expression, so Post-Boomers have grown up in less structured households with working (often divorced) parents. These childhood experiences leave them craving authentic spiritual experience, rather than entertainment, and also cause them to question institutions. Flory and Miller develop a typology that captures four current approaches to the Christian faith and argue that this generation represents a new religious orientation of “expressive communalism,” in which they seek spiritual experience and fulfillment in community and through various expressive forms of spirituality, both private and public.

Political Solidarity

Political Solidarity PDF Author: Sally J. Scholz
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271047216
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description


After Repression

After Repression PDF Author: Elizabeth R. Nugent
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691203067
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
In the wake of the Arab Spring, newly empowered factions in Tunisia and Egypt vowed to work together to establish democracy. In Tunisia, political elites passed a new constitution, held parliamentary elections, and demonstrated the strength of their democracy with a peaceful transfer of power. Yet in Egypt, unity crumbled due to polarization among elites. Presenting a new theory of polarization under authoritarianism, the book reveals how polarization and the legacies of repression led to these substantially divergent political outcomes. The book documents polarization among the opposition in Tunisia and Egypt prior to the Arab Spring, tracing how different kinds of repression influenced the bonds between opposition groups.

A Political Economy of the Middle East

A Political Economy of the Middle East PDF Author: Melani Cammett
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN: 9780813349381
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A Political Economy of the Middle East is the most comprehensive analysis of developments in the political economy of the region over the past several decades, examining the interaction of economic development processes, state systems and policies, and social actors in the Middle East. The fourth edition, with new authors Melani Cammett and Ishac Diwan, has been thoroughly revised, with two new introductory chapters that provide an updated framework with which to understand and study the many changes in demography, education, labor markets, urbanization, water and agriculture, and international labor migration in the recent years. The new edition also includes: a new chapter that charts the political economy of the Gulf states and, in particular, the phenomenal growth of oil economies; a new chapter on the rise of "crony capitalism;" and increased coverage of the changes in civil society and social movements in the region, including an exploration of the causes, dynamics, consequences, and aftermath of the Arab uprisings.

How to Raise a Feminist Son

How to Raise a Feminist Son PDF Author: Sonora Jha
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
ISBN: 1632173654
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
"This book is a true love letter, not only to Jha's own son but also to all of our sons and to the parents--especially mothers--who raise them.” —Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Mediocre Beautifully written and deeply personal, this book follows the struggles and triumphs of one single, immigrant mother of color to raise an American feminist son. From teaching consent to counteracting problematic messages from the media, well-meaning family, and the culture at large, the author offers an empowering, imperfect feminism, brimming with honest insight and actionable advice. Informed by Jha's work as a professor of journalism specializing in social justice movements and social media, as well as by conversations with psychologists, experts, other parents and boys--and through powerful stories from her own life--How to Raise a Feminist Son shows us all how to be better feminists and better teachers of the next generation of men in this electrifying tour de force. Includes chapter takeaways, and an annotated bibliography of reading and watching recommendations for adults and children. "A beautiful hybrid of memoir, manifesto, instruction manual, and rumination on the power of story and possibilities of family." —Rebecca Solnit, author of The Mother of All Questions